Monday Morning Links, News, And Views -- IBM, TimeWarner, Join GE -- Part II

Here's an idea. The oil companies who want to frack for oil in New York ought to offer to fund the New York Opera. Wow, wouldn't that be a gut check? It looks like the New York Opera is about to go under (again). And, to think that all that oil royalty income for the state of New York could do so much for its citizens.

New York City Opera will cancel the rest of its season and could fold entirely if it doesn't raise $7 million by the end of September, company officials said Sunday.

The emergency capital campaign, aiming for $20 million by the end of the year, comes two years after the company pulled itself out of a financial tailspin by trimming its budget, cutting productions from its season and leaving its longtime home at Lincoln Center.

While those painful measures—criticized at the time by many opera supporters—allowed City Opera to balance its budget for the first time in more than a decade, it since then has struggled with cash-flow problems.

You can show them how to do it, but only they can decide. 

North Dakota, with $500 million/year in royalties, North Dakota could fund the $7 million the NY opera needs with about a week's worth of oil money. Just saying. A week's worth.

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Might Congress step in and repeal the US Renewable Standard, the one requiring 15% ethanol? Unlikely. Iowa farmers can sleep peacefully.

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Austrian oil company OMV halts production in Libya due to civil unrest.

A South Korean giraffe sets a record for calving its 18th baby. Cool.

Until Sunday, Jang-soon had shared the record of 17 offspring born in a controlled environment with a giraffe named Lamba at Paris zoo, which died in 2005.

Jang-soon belongs to the endangered reticulated-giraffe subspecies characterized by white-lined polygonal shapes on a brown coat. There are less than 5,000 reticulated giraffes living in the wild, mostly in eastern African nations like Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, according to the Giraffe Conservation Foundation.

Sunday was coincidentally the mother’s 27th birthday, Everland said. She was born in 1986 and gave birth for the first time at age four. The gestation period for a giraffe is around 15 months, meaning Jang-soon has been carrying offspring most of her adult life. She once gave birth to twins.

The ever-enduring Jones Act is not going to go away. Sad face.

The US maritime industry loves it, refiners tolerate it and traders scorn it. The nearly 100-year-old Merchant Marine Act of 1920, or the Jones Act, is regarded both as an American job saver and as a protectionist burden on taxpayers that raises the price of gasoline.

The Jones Act requires that all goods transported by water between US ports be carried in US-flag ships, built in the US, owned by US citizens and crewed by US citizens (and permanent residents). It was designed as both a national security measure and as a way to support US shipyards, tug and barge owners, as well as other US maritime interests.

Almost a year ago, when Hurricane Sandy battered oil market infrastructure on the US Atlantic Coast—taking pipelines, ports and refineries offline that caused widespread fuel shortages—the Department of Homeland Security was forced to issue a blanket waiver of the Jones Act to all shipping for 12 days. It was the first time it had been waived since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.

Average US household gained $1,200 in 2012 thanks to surging US oil production. I used my $1,200 to install a home entertainment system for my wife in her artist studio. The over-sized flat screen television will air "CreateTV" 24/7.

I had forgotten that GE moved it retirees off its health care program; pushing them on the Federal program. 

America's biggest employers, from GE to IBM, are increasingly moving retirees to insurance exchanges where they select their own health plans, an historic shift that could push more costs onto U.S. taxpayers.

Time Warner Cable Inc. (TWC) yesterday said it would steer retired workers toward a privately run exchange, days after a similar announcement by International Business Machines Corp. General Electric Co. (GE) last year said it, too, would curb benefits in a move that may send some former employees to the public insurance exchanges created under the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

While retiree health benefits have been shrinking for years, the newest cutbacks may quickly become the norm. About 44 percent of companies plan to stop administering health plans for their former workers over the next two years, a survey last month by consultant Towers Watson & Co. (TW) found. Retirees are concerned their costs may rise, while analysts predict benefits will decline in some cases. 

GE's CEO was O'Bama's economic adviser at the time time, so he got the jump on things.